


Moving Without Eyes

by perid0ttie



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghost Hunters, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, End of the World, F/F, Gen, Paranormal
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-18
Updated: 2016-05-18
Packaged: 2018-06-09 04:45:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6890749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perid0ttie/pseuds/perid0ttie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"One second I’m drinking a delicious cocktail in a stranger’s basement. The next, the world is ending. Apparently I’m also the Queen of Hell. Or so they say. Let me take you back a bit." Since she was little, Peridot has been in touch with the supernatural, whether it be ghosts, disembodied voices, monsters, or demons. This led her to become the town's ghost hunter. But when a case- a mother taken to her grave by illness- goes awry, it leaves Peridot questioning who she can and cannot trust. She also discovers she's not who she thought of herself to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moving Without Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I just started writing again after a super long break, and I've always had a love for supernatural/surreal types of works, so I decided to tackle something myself! I have plenty ideas for this fic, so definitely expect more! Thanks for reading!

_ One second I’m drinking a delicious cocktail in a stranger’s basement. The next, the world is ending. Apparently I’m also the Queen of Hell. Or so they say. _

 

Let me take you back.

 

I’ve always had the unusual ability of seeing things I’m not supposed to. Like ghosts and monsters and fairies. The stuff in bedtime stories and myths. The stuff you’d watch on television that would scare you so much they’d appear in your dreams. Except I saw them in real life,  _ and  _ in my dreams. It was a double-edged sword.

It started when I was four years old, when my parents mysteriously disappeared and I was shipped off to live with my uncle. The police never finished the missing persons case. They declared them dead and moved on with their busy lives. But for me, they were still very much alive.

I was confused at first as to why everyone was telling me my parents were dead when my mother would tuck me in at night and my father would be standing in the kitchen every morning when I woke up. Then I was taken to their imaginary funeral, with an empty casket and lilacs scattered all over the cemetery ground. I cried, mainly because everyone else was crying and as a young child I didn’t know what else to do. Everyone hugged me close and whispered their condolences into my ear, but an hour later they were all drinking and laughing it up. I went home to a closet-sized bedroom and a living room that smelled like smoke.

Every day after that, I sat across from my uncle and watched in awe as he huffed out lung-full after lung-full of tobacco smoke. He kept a window open, but that didn’t stop the heavy gray fog from forming around the ceiling. It swirled into shapes and humanlike forms before my eyes, and I listened as I heard my mother and father converse with them. The smoke people barely had faces, no eyes, only the slope of a nose and movement of a bottom jaw. My mother’s cold, breezy hand would pet my hair softly, and their voices floated through my head. I could never remember what their conversations were about after the smoke dissipated and my mother walked away.

I had a couple weeks to mourn before my uncle told me I had to go back to kindergarten. I spent that entire time wondering what I was mourning over. I spent that time coloring from a cheap book and ripping the pages out to hang the finished masterpieces around the house, figuring the dreary apartment needed some decoration. I would always find my doodles ripped and dumped into the trashcan the next day, but that never stopped me from coloring more. Eventually I had finished every black outlined drawing in the book.

I wasn’t alone. I mean- besides the shitstain of an uncle. I had my mother, my father, the smoke people, and whoever else wandered into the house. I started seeing things all around me. Packs of dogs would walk straight through the closed door and settle on the couches and floors until the living room was nothing but soft fur. I would laugh and roll around with them. A singing housewife appeared in the kitchen one day, and she smelled like chocolate chip cookies and flowers. I always lingered outside of the kitchen doorframe to watch her, entranced by the way her long skirt would swoosh and swirl through the air as she swayed back and forth. One time I found a swaddled baby occupying the spot on my bed.

Some days the house was so crowded and noisy it made my head spin. Some days it was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. I enjoyed the company more than the silence, even if nobody else could see what I was seeing.

The years went by and everyone else forgot about my parents. They were just another couple buried in graves side by side. Every now and then a distant relative would pretend to weep as they placed flowers on the stone markers, but those flowers would wilt and be dead in the next few days. It didn’t matter to anyone. There weren’t any bodies down there, anyway.

Of course, I never forgot about my parents. How could I when they visited every single day? My mom kissed my forehead every morning before school and my dad sat with me while I scribbled out homework in the afternoon.

I never directly told anyone about the things that I saw... at least, I didn’t tell any adults. I did, however, confide in a girl who sat by herself during recess named Lapis. Everyone called her  _ freak _ and  _ weirdo _ , and I did too. It made her cry. But when I started seeing things, I knew I was also a freak and a weirdo. So the next logical step was to tell her all about it. How the shadow of a black cat was curled around her feet right at that very moment when we were talking. How I saw a whole other world filled with fire through every mirror I walked by. She called me a weirdo. We stayed friends until high school, when we eventually drifted away due to different interests.

The things I saw didn’t start invading my dreams until high school. Sure, they could get annoying during the day if it was particularly busy, but the ghosts I saw never directly interacted me... Until they started screaming my name while I slept. Especially this one figure, who I always dreamt was draped in cloaks of fire and white. I couldn’t see their face, but they always stood in the middle of an echoing cavern and screeched my name. I fell victim to constant nightmares, and staying awake during class suddenly became a struggle.

The dreams persisted up until I graduated and took a job as an on-call technical support person for some cheapo company. Their office was on the edge of a sketchy ass street named Blackwood Road, alongside a strip of empty buildings. It was  _ kind of _ creepy, to say the least. Oddly enough, it felt most comfortable. It took me away from the hustle and bustle of constant ghostly figures. Only a few followed after me, the ones that were always lingering closeby. That included one ghostly girl with long, wavy hair who I never saw fully; she always hid herself around corners. It also included an old bloodhound with a limp who never barked or whined and a nervous, disembodied voice that constantly rambled about the end of the world.

 

What a fool.

 

The job paid decently. Enough to cover rent and food, at least. And a weekly visit to the bar. And the occasional spurge at the bookstore.

Oh yeah- I had a side job, too. I was a “Paranormal Investigator”. Official title. It was on my business card and everything. I figured,  _ hey, if the guys on TV can do it, then I can do it, too.  _ And people really eat up all that paranormal stuff. I even saved up for some fancy equipment, to make myself look more legit. Even though I never needed any of those recorders or ghost detectors. I was already equipped with that.

Every week I would get two, maybe three of these paranormal cases. People would either call me or find me in person. Most of these cases were simply people imagining their worst fears too hard. They would claim creaking doors and footsteps, but their houses would be dead empty. No ghosts to be accounted for. So I’d give them the thumbs up and they’d sleep peacefully that night. Whoop-de-fuckin’-do for them.

Others, though, were much more fun. Cases of haunted elevators or school bathrooms where there were rumors of death. I would grab my trusty flashlight and march right in there and have a conversation with the ghost, and most of the time they would feel better enough to move on to the afterlife. I guess most of them just needed someone to tell them that it’ll be alright. The hauntings would stop after then, and those clients would tell their friends all about me. I got pretty popular and well-known.

It was like an underground business, and it admittedly got me pretty excited. Tech support by day, ghost whisperer by night. But I had never encountered any malicious spirits...

 

Until that damn day.

 

There was nothing out of the ordinary for the first half of the day. I woke up, brushed my teeth, fed my cat, toasted some poptarts, and was on my way to my 9-5 shift. Totally normal and mundane- besides my ghostly companions. My mother still kissed my forehead every morning, which I always rolled my eyes at, but she was there to stay. The ghosts had become mundane for me, anyway. After a long shift, a half hour lunch break around 1, it was off to the bar with me. By then, the sun had set, the deep winter chill threatening to freeze my fingers off. I quickly stuffed my hands into the pockets of my jacket and buried my nose into the soft side of my scarf.

The bar was stuffy, always uncomfortably humid, and smelled like BO. The corner booth in the back was basically my after-hours office. I’d set up with a drink on the rocks and a straw, maybe some bar nachos or peanuts, and wait. The bar was filled with patrons, both alive and dead, but to any unknowing eye it could be a normal scene. Even the ghosts were laughing and pretending to drink- except the one who always hung from a noose tied to the ceiling.

I conversed with both the living and the deceased. The occasional spirit would approach me to sit down and chat, and I’d always set up a menu in front of my face and lean behind it and talk in a whisper. The living would also come and sit down. Only those who knew who I was, though. Well- sometimes some guy would come up and place a drink in front of me and assure that he had it covered- I’d politely say thank you, and then slide the drink off to the side.

Five or six people may come every night I’m there at the bar, which was always Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and I would either debunk their case on the spot or schedule a further investigation. Usually if someone had a  _ real  _ haunting, they would have a different... presence to them. Something about their aura that either smelled different, looked different, or felt different. Some people felt ice cold, making goose bumps pop up all over my arms. Others smelled like charcoal and burning flesh. Sometimes I could even see a dim glow around the outline of their body. That was always a good indicator that their house was probably fucked up.

I dismissed people who were missing any signs. They all said the same thing anyway; things going missing, windows found wide open, supposed monster lurking in their closet- I’m no psychoanalyst, but it didn’t take that much digging to root their so-called hauntings to anxiety and paranoia.

I had my lips at the tip of my straw when someone sat down across from me at the booth. He had on a dark hoodie, the hood up and covering all of his hair except for a single dark lock, his head hanging to cast a shadow over his eyes. He held something close to his chest.

“Can I help you?” I questioned nonchalantly. I took a sip of my drink. He slipped a folder across the table, and I made room between my laptop and notebook to flip it open. I gave him a curious glance, but his eyes were glued to his feet. I flicked liquid off of the rim of my cold glass.

Inside the folder sat photographs, some printed on plain white printer paper and some printed on actual photo paper. There also was a handwritten note, the pen writing severely smudged and smeared from water damage. I slid them out and fanned them in front of me.

“My mother died,” a crackly voice unexpectedly came from the boy. He raised a hand up to his face to wipe away tears and sniffled before continuing. “But she needs help.”

“Well,” I started matter-of-factly, chewing on the end of my straw. “If she’s dead, there’s no helping her. That’s how death works, you know.”

The boy lifted his head enough to show his face fully, and I grimaced at his bloodshot chocolate eyes. I hated when they got emotional. “ _ Please _ ,” he began to beg, clasping his chubby fingers together and setting them on the table. I raised an eyebrow. “Please help me. She died, but I don’t think she has... you know...” I watched as the curly haired kid waved his hands about in the air as if he was throwing a baseball. He couldn’t have been older than 14.

“...Passed over?” I ventured, absentmindedly fixing the scarf that kept my hair neatly tucked together. A single strand managed to escape and curled at the side of my cheek, but I elected to ignore it. “There’s a lot of reasons the soul of a being isn’t able to pass over. Either she’s keeping herself here, or something else is keeping her here-”

“But- but that’s the thing!” the boy stuttered rapidly. I just then realized he had an entire galaxy flickering in his dark brown eyes. “We don’t know why she isn’t able to... pass over? She’s stuck here and we’ve done everything we can-”

“Who’s we-?”

“She’s angry for some reason and that’s so unlike her, she should’ve been peaceful! We did everything to make sure she-”

I picked up my pen and dragged my ratty 99 cent spiral notebook close to myself. “Slow down, slow down,” I urged, clicking the ballpoint pen and scribbling it inside of the margins to get the black ink flowing. “Start from the beginning. And give me your name.” Even when I was looking away, the boy was making me see stars behind my eyelids every time I closed my eyes. The disembodied voice who I begrudgingly called a friend whispered something about black holes into my left ear.

After a few deep breaths and his gloved hand pressed to his chest, the boy spoke carefully. “Steven. Steven Universe.” I jotted his name down at the top, along with the date and the number  _ 7.15.2 _ . For a second, the ink flashed red before my eyes. I blinked once and it returned to black.

“Okay, uh...” Steven twiddled his thumbs on the table, eyes finding a comfortable spot on the wall behind me to stare at as he thought. “My mom has been sick for a while. Like, sick enough to be bedridden and hooked up to an IV. But we kept her home, since my dad said she didn’t have a lot of time left, and he wanted her to be comfortable and constantly surrounded by loved ones. We thought everything was going good. She spent her last few days alive enjoying some of her favorite foods, surrounded by all of my stuffed animals, and I slept by her every night... She finally, uh... died two nights ago...” As he ran through his story, I made a list of the events, each line starting with an asterisk.

 

_ * client - frantic son, young _

_ * sick mom _

_ * bed ridden, stayed at home _

_ * surrounded w/ material items... look into possession _

_ * death on night of nov. 14 _

_ * mention of “we”; who is we? _

 

I underlined the last note to remind myself to question him further about that.

 

He continued, and when I glanced up from my notes, I found him staring straight at me- no, straight  _ through  _ me. It chilled my bones. My heart pounded against my ribcage. He felt as cold as ice.

“She’s still in the house. And she’s angry. We don’t know why she’s angry, I’ve never seen her get physically aggressive in my life! But now she’s throwing things around and even scratched Pearl, and we’ve captured some EVPs of her saying things like ‘die’ and ‘you can’t escape’ and- awful things! My dad is so scared, he refuses to enter the house with the rest of us. We had to stay in a hotel last night...” Tears swelled up in the boy’s starry eyes, and I forced myself to look away. I  _ hated  _ when they got emotional.

“Peridot, please... we don’t know what else to do. We need someone to go in there and speak with her. To try and find out what’s wrong.” The tears flooded over, and I grabbed the boy a rough, scratchy brown napkin from the napkin holder. He took it with a forced, trembly smile. “You’re the only person in this town that handles stuff like this... We need you. You’re the only one that can help my mom.”

I propped my cheek up on a hand, elbow resting on the table beside the photographs, which I was all too curious to dig through. The escaped strand of hair got too close to my mouth and I blew it away with a huff.

“Well, I’m sure that’s an exaggeration. There are many more well known paranormal investigators and mediums nationwide that could help as well, but- I appreciate the sentiment, Steven.” His eyes softened up, and in sync with them my heart slowed a little bit. “It sounds like you have a serious case on your hands. Sometimes when spirits attempt to pass over to the other side, all of the emotion that they bottled up when they were living can be amplified. It could be possible that your mother had a lot of stored up anger, and she’s only now expressing it. Either she’ll burn herself out and pass over by herself, or she’ll require some nudging.”

I scribbled down some more points in my notebook.

 

*  _ steven - starry eyes; not sure why _

_ * emotion: anger _

_ * symptoms: throwing things, audible speech, physical contact (scratching) _

_ * dad afraid to enter house _

_ * spirit bound to house _

 

The pen clicked again and I leaned back against the padded booth. “I have some questions for you, Steven. You keep saying we; who is  _ we _ ? Besides your dad, that is.”

With gentle fingers, Steven dabbed at the corner of his wet eyes with the napkin. “Oh! It’s the others. Me, dad, Pearl, Garnet, and Amethyst.” He counted each name off on his fingers, then held it up for me to see, flashing a toothy smile. “They’re... good family friends, I guess you could say. They were around even before I was born. They’re good friends of mom, or- I guess,  _ were _ ...” I already had their names written in my trusty notebook.

My eyes wandered to the photographs that were still untouched. My fingers itched to explore them, and a simple, inquiring glance towards Steven gave me enough clearance to begin.

Pen in one hand, I picked up each photo and held it up to the overhead lamp. It was dim, but gave me enough light to see the details of the photograph. The first one was of a woman; Fair skin, thick brown hair in large, theatrical looking ringlets decorated with small roses, stunning earth-colored eyes that shimmered with life, and glossy pink lips. It was a bust picture, and she held a bouquet of flowers against her chest. She wore white. ‘ _ Must be a wedding picture _ ’, I figured to myself, writing down each thing about her on the right side of my current notebook page.

“What was your mother’s name?” I further questioned, switching to the next set of photos printed on printer paper, three on one page. They were all of a house, with abundant floral decorations, lace trimmings on pillows, textured countertops, and old-styled table lamps.

Steven, who had calmed down considerably and was now checking out the collection of stickers on my laptop, answered in a suspiciously cheerful tone; “Rose. Rose Universe. Well- her maiden name is Rose  _ Quartz _ . But she took my dad’s last name when they got married! And then I took her maiden name as a middle name.” He cracked another shiny grin, but it quickly faded back into a saddened smile.

I nodded in response, then focused all of my attention once again on the photographs. There was another one, a group of people who I assumed were the family friends Steven had mentioned. They were all smiling and had their arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders and waists. Yet another was of the same woman, Rose, laying in bed, and, as Steven’s story told, hooked up to an IV pole. She looked frail, a hand reaching out toward the camera, her head resting helplessly against the propped up pillow. Her eyes no longer shimmered, no longer had the color of earth. More like dirty mud. Less life. A  _ lot  _ less life.

I squinted my eyes at the next one; the lighting was dark, almost too dark to make out. It was of the same house, except the lamps were all smashed on the floor, glass scattered about the wooden boards. The pretty rose-pattern wallpaper was ripped, like giant claws raked all the way from the ceiling to the floor. The lace trimmed pillows were torn apart, stuffing strewn about the couch.

“That’s...” the boy sitting across from me started nervously, leaning over to look at the photo as well. “That’s what the house looked like last night. Sorry it’s so dark, it was late, and...” His thick eyebrows scrunched together, and his starry eyes dropped to the table’s surface. He let out a heavy sigh, and I felt its weight on my own shoulders. “I just want to help her, Peridot...”

I chewed my bottom lip, pushing the photos aside to look at the handwritten letter. Flowers decorated the edges, and the lines in which the words were written on were pink. The ink itself was plain old black, handwriting smooth and perfect- that is, the bits that weren’t ruined. It looked as if the note took a trip through the washing machine, but some of the note was still legible. Notably, parts such as  _ You are special, Steven _ , and  _ Nothing can take your extraordinary power away. Shine bright, my flower _ _.  _ It was signed off at the end with a curly  Love, Mama .

Steven answered my question before I could ask it; “That’s the last letter my mom wrote to me.” I quirked my head in question, and he cautiously took the letter from me. “She used to travel a lot. Mainly for her work, but she also really enjoyed traveling. Even if she wasn’t around a lot when I was a kid, she was still a really great mom. She’d always send me souvenirs and write me letters like this! Sorry it’s, uh, messed up. I like to carry them wherever I go and sometimes I forget to take them out of my pockets…” 

I gathered up the photographs and tapped them together upright on the table to align them perfectly before sticking them back into the folder and closing it. “Steven, I won’t lie-” The folder slid over the smooth wooden surface slower than I intended, and I couldn’t help but to gulp. Sweat beaded at my hairline. “This is the first case I’ve taken where a spirit has manifested itself in...  _ this  _ way. As in, scratching and breaking stuff and causing destruction on our plane of existence.”

At least that got his attention again. Staring into his galaxy eyes was quickly becoming my new addiction. His gaze made me feel like I was floating away, and I had to force myself to stay grounded. “...When are you free? I can schedule an appointment with you and visit the house. Preferably past 6 PM.” Those universe eyes lit up like the sun, and he excitedly smacked the table with a hand.

“Great! Oh my God, that’s great!” he exclaimed, receiving a few harsh glares from people at the booth beside us. “I-I think any time will do! Whenever you’re free!”

I took a moment to dig out my smaller notebook, a planner of sorts, and flipped to the current week. I already had an appointment penned in for the following night, and I chewed the end of my pen in thought. “How about Thursday at 8:30? It’ll be dark enough by then. Spirits always seem to like the cover of darkness.”

The curling haired boy nodded enthusiastically, and pulled out his iPhone. “Yeah, yeah! That works! Lemme just- lemme tell Pearl.” His fingers worked fast, he was done texting before I could blink, and he beamed at me. He smiled just like his mother.

“Let me have the address, then. Come on, hurry up. I need to be somewhere.” I started packing up my laptop into its case as Steven grabbed my pen and wrote his address at the top of the page. It urked me a bit how he wrote it slanted and uneven, but I resisted making a comment. The boy was having a hard enough time as it was. He didn’t need a neurotic ghost hunter on his ass about simple things, as well.

In reality, I didn’t need to be anywhere except the squeaky bed back in my apartment with my face stuffed into some research. If I was to tackle such a case as this one, I’d have to read up on it first. I had no experience with malicious entities, and the best way to learn was to watch the best of the best. That meant a lot of Ghost Adventures featuring Zak Bagans, and books on witchcraft and paranormal activity. Maybe a horror movie or two. Needless to say, I had my work cut out for me that night.

As I slung my black and green backpack over my shoulder, notebook tucked away inside of my jacket for safe keeping, the disembodied voice floated by my right ear and whispered  _ ‘don’t trust them’ _ . I had learned not to listen to anything he said, as a lot of it seemed illogical and and untrustworthy. He held a particular distaste for the mint hot chocolate on the local Starbucks menu, and out of spite, I always bought it and drank it all as he shouted into my head about how it would poison me and I would drop dead. Not yet, disembodied voice. Not yet.

Steven chased after me, and I realized the kid was actually pretty tall. I mean, I wasn’t the tallest bean sprout in the garden either, but he was already just above eye level to me. I let out a huff of air through my nostrils. “Just be present when I do my investigation. You don’t have to come in with me if you don’t want to. In fact, it may have a different effect on the spirit if you do join me. I’ll have to assess the situation when I’m there.”

“Rose,” the boy urged, accidentally bumping against my side as we both squeezed through the door of the bar. We headed down the damp street, snow melting under the warm street lights. “Her name is Rose, not  _ the spirit _ .”

I raised an eyebrow, then narrowed my eyes behind my glasses. “Fine,  _ Rose _ . Rose may react differently depending on if she’s interacting with you, her own son, or me, a complete stranger. Let me do my research, Steven. If you need anything else, you’ll know where to find me on Wednesday night.”

The boy nearly burst with joy, and he let it out with a loud yelp. He reached forward and grabbed me in a tight hug, and I flinched, but let it happen. As long as I could get one last look into those eyes of his. His aura was no longer cold; he was, in fact, quite warm as he squeezed me close for a few moments. He finally released me, and I couldn’t help the scowl on my face. “Peridot, thank you, thank you, thank you! I’ll really have to find a way to repay you other than money. I don’t know how, but I’ll find a way!”

Before I could respond, the zippy boy was off, heading the opposite way of my home. So I waved back at him, before he swung back around to look where he was running. I was left alone- although not terribly alone. The old dog lagged behind my steady footsteps and the little girl gasped as I walked by her hiding spot behind a bench. We all went home together.


End file.
